


Whitewash

by theficisalie



Series: Runaway Scars [1]
Category: Bandom, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theficisalie/pseuds/theficisalie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank wakes up. It's good to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whitewash

**Author's Note:**

> beta: [restlesslikeme](http://restlesslikeme.livejournal.com)

**Chapter 1**

Frank woke up.

In his room.

“This is my room,” he said.

It was good to wake up in your room.

He sat up, pushing away the white sheets that had kept him covered throughout the night. The clock by his bed, white plastic with black trim, blinked cheerfully at him.

“Seven o’clock!” Frank chirped back, equally as chipper. It was good to be friendly to all people, and since his alarm clock woke him up in every morning, it had to be thought of as a friend. “Thank you.”

After a minute of hemming and hawing at his closet, Frank picked out, from the rows of neatly-folded identical stacks of fabric:  
\- 1 pair of standard issue “Battery Black” jeans  
\- 1 white shirt, collar stiff and starch (and 1 undershirt)  
\- 1 pair of black socks

He took a quick shower (it was good to be clean), got dressed, and headed out to work.

Work was uneventful but fulfilling. Frank got to sit on a black stool, and attach one finger-sized piece of white plastic to a piece of clear plastic. He had gotten promoted recently, and was allowed to use the heat press to attach the two. Before that, he had been selecting clean pieces of plastic from a bin and putting them onto conveyor belts. This job was much better.

He took his pills at noon, and the train home at four.

His mother was already at his apartment when he got back around four thirty. She dropped by after working to check up on him. It was nice, having a parent who cared so much about him.

“Frank,” she said when he walked in.

“Mother!” he responded.

“Now,” she said, accepting his offer of a hug, “remember what the doctor said about being too excitable.”

“It undermines my medication,” Frank recited. He tried not to bounce in place. “I remember.”

Remember? He paused, the white room suddenly pulsing with light.

No. That wasn’t right.

“Frankie,” his mother sighed. “Were you listening to a word I said?”

Frank blushed. “Oops.”

“I was saying that you need to get your hair cut,” she said. “It’s getting long in the back. You should pick a different place this time.”

“But it’s good to be a loyal customer,” Frank said.

His mother shook her head, but Frank could see that she was smiling. It made her entire face light up. Her cheeks were rosy and with her hair curling right around her ears, she was beautiful. “Okay. I have to leave, Frankie. Be good.”

Frank nodded, and hugged her again.

“Don’t forget to take your pills,” she said as she walked out the door.

When Frank’s clock clicked to five, he took his pills and climbed into bed.

“Goodnight clock,” he said.

It blinked _Goodnight_ , and he went to sleep.

* * * *

Frank woke up.

In his room.

Frank went to sleep.

In his room.

No.

Frank woke up.

On the floor.

No.

White tiles. Red tiles. Pink tiles.

No.

Frank went to work. But he hadn’t woken up. Or fallen asleep.

Frank woke up. No.

Frank went to sleep.

In his room.

No.

“This is a dream,” he told his clock, who blinked in agreement.

_Life is a dream._

“Hm.” He blinked at his clock.

His clock blinked back. _Go to bed, Frank. You’re tired._

“I am,” he agreed.

Frank went to sleep.

* * * *

Frank woke up.

In his room.

“This is my room,” he said.

It was good to wake up in your room.

The clock by his bed blinked cheerfully at him.

_Good morning, Frank._

He blinked. The pillow on his cheek, white covering white, caressed the line of his jaw, a long thin index finger. The calluses along the tip caught on a week’s worth of stubble running across his face. Itching. Burning. There was dried blood crusted in the corner of his mouth.

_Still alive, are we?_

He sat up, pushed away his sheets, feeling like he needed to scrub his skin until it was raw. He ran a hand across his cheek. Rough, but like he’d shaved it yesterday.

Yesterday?

His alarm clock blinked again. _Up, Frank._

“Seven o’clock,” Frank said. It was good to be friendly to all people. “Thank you.”

He padded to his bathroom, the floor (WOOD) beneath his feet (WHITE) solid and unmoving (NOT SLICK WITH BLOOD). The water ran hot and filled the small room with steam, which clung to Frank’s skin.

He shivered. Clinging to his skin were clothes wet with his own blood, sticking to him, drying like they were trying to become a part of him, which they weren’t, they weren’t, they weren’t. He tore off his pyjamas and threw them across the bathroom. They landed on the back of the toilet, sagging like he’d killed them.

Good.

He didn’t need carnivorous clothes anyway.

After he emerged from the shower, pink and dripping clear water down to the floor, black hair plastered to his head, he picked out clothes that looked like they didn’t want to eat the flesh from his bones. His shirt felt wrong. It was too white. But he didn’t have anything else to put on, so he left it like it was.

He grabbed his bottle of pills on the way out of his apartment, but hesitated a moment before taking them. That didn’t feel right either. But it had to be.

He could have sworn the air was buzzing for a moment before the pills kicked in, numbing the air around his hands.

He clocked in at work, the paper foreign in his fingers and took his place on his stool. Across the way, a man smiled and waved at him.

Frank smiled back: it was good to be polite to all people.

“Hey Frank,” the man said.

“Hello,” Frank answered. He wasn’t sure who the man was, but it was good to be friendly.

The man shuffled over, hands deep in the pockets of his standard issue ‘Battery Black’ jeans. “How’s your month so far? You’ve been awful quiet over there.”

Frank froze. Month? “I’ve only been back a day,” he said.

The man frowned. “No, you showed up here a month ago. Introduced yourself as Frank. Went over to your corner, started working. This is the first time you’ve acknowledged my presence.”

That didn’t sound right. Frank hesitated, trying to remember. “I’ve only been back a day,” he repeated, finally.

“Okay,” the man said, frowning. “Whatever you say. Where’d you used to work before this, anyway?”

Frank glanced down at the plastic in his hands. He was supposed to be working. It was good to do your work. Work was fulfilling. But it was also good to be polite. “Same building,” he said. “I’ve only been back a day. I got promoted.”

“Right.” The man looked uneasy now, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Well, it’s been good talking to you.”

“It’s good to talk,” Frank agreed. He blinked away dancing spots at the corners of his eyes. What had the man meant, he’d been there for a month? It had only been one day, just one.

Except now that he was thinking about it, he could remember a series of train rides, each one identical to the last. All the same. All white and black. All the same ride. Hadn’t they just been one?

He thought as he worked, letting his hands idly piece together parts and wondering why he couldn’t remember as he took the train home. His mother had already come and gone by the time he got there, and left only a note on his fridge that read:

_Make an appointment before you take your pills. Hair cut, Frankie. You haven’t got one since you’ve been back. Are your pills not working right? You haven’t been very talkative lately. I’ll see you tomorrow. Hair cut, Frank._

Hair cut.

He reached a hand up to touch the strands of black curling over the shell of his ear. It was long, where yesterday - a month ago? - it had been short. It kind of felt like it had been a month. But why couldn’t he remember?

There was a book on his counter, open to the entry that read Hair Salon, Frank’s.

Frank picked up the phone. He dialed the number. He waited.

_“Identical Hair Cuts, how may we help you?”_

“I’d like to make an appointment,” Frank said.

_“Sure, what for?”_

Frank paused. The voice had a strange tilt to it. “Um,” he said, confused. “A hair cut?”

“ _Sure, sure. Never mind me, that was just a joke. You got a metal brain recently, huh?”_

“Um. Just a hair cut, please.” Frank was feeling nervous. He didn’t like feeling nervous. It was not good to be nervous. Thinking about being nervous was making him even more nervous.

_“Right. How’s Friday?”_

Friday. Red and green and yellow pulsing in the air, swirling in a cup. Friday.

Frank shook his head. White walls, _white_.

“Good,” Frank said. “Friday.”

_“After work then? Four o’clock, we’ve got an opening.”_

“Four o’clock,” Frank said. He wrote it on the note on his fridge, so he wouldn’t forget. “Friday.”

 _“Later, then,”_ the voice said, and hung up.

Later.

He had to take his pills. The plastic bottle was burning a hole in his pocket. Frank hung up, too. He fumbled with the white lid, popping the colours into his mouth. The phone call had been...he couldn’t think of a word that would describe what he meant. Strange? Yes.

“Strange,” Frank said, informing his clock of what had happened as he stretched out on his bed. “It was strange.”

He’d left his monstrous pyjamas in his bathroom, and pulled his sheets around his bare shoulders.

If he couldn’t remember yesterday, what else was he forgetting?

 _Good night, Frank._ His clock was stubborn. _Go to sleep._

“Yeah, alright.” Frank sighed and turned away from his clock, to face the wall. “Good night.”

**Chapter 2**

Frank woke up.

In his room.

“This is my room,” he said.

It was good to wake up in your room, even if your head felt like it had been shoved into a cloud. Did he usually feel like this after he’d gone to sleep?

It was seven o’clock if the clock by his bed was to be believed. It was usually pretty trustworthy, as clocks went.

_Good morning, Frank._

He got out of bed before the handsy cotton could grab him like it had last time, but didn’t manage to escape quickly enough: as he ran towards his bathroom, he could still feel the ghost of fingers running up and down his spine.

He couldn’t stop shivering even though he stood in the scalding spray until his fingers started to wrinkle where they were pressed to the sides of his face. It felt like his skin was patched together poorly, the seams coming undone thread by thread. Like at any moment, it might all peel away and he’d be left as a skeleton.

None of his clothes looked right. The pants, black as night, were too dark. The shirts, white piled on top of white, were too light. Too stiff. Too wrong.

He put them on anyway, pulled the sleeves down to his wrists. It was either that or walk around half naked.

When he closed his closet, a note fluttered to the ground.

_Check your fridge._

The handwriting was his. Frank frowned and picked up the fallen paper. He turned it over: nothing on the back.

The one on the fridge looked the same, written by his hand. It read: _Hair cut today. The usual place. Four o’clock._

Funny. He couldn’t remember writing it. He couldn’t remember yesterday, not really. He could vaguely remember not remembering. What?

The train ride over felt long and identical to something he couldn’t quite place. When he got to work, he clocked in, frowning at the list of dates he’d performed the action before. Too many days he didn’t remember.

He smiled at the man across the way from him when the man waved. Did he know the man?

“Hey Frank, how’s it going?” So he did know him. Where from? Frank grimaced and the man copied his facial expression. “What’s it been this time, three days?”

Frank’s frown deepened. He felt like he’d been in this situation before. “Since what?”

“The last time we talked?” The man tilted his head to the side. He had brown hair, Frank noticed. Brown eyes.

“I’ve never seen you before,” Frank said. “Are you thinking of someone else? You should consult a medical professional if you’ve been experiencing hallucinations.”

“No,” the man said. “You...never mind, man. How’s work?”

“Work,” Frank said. He did some kind of work. What was it that he did? “I don’t know. What do I do here?”

“Same thing you’ve been doing every other day,” the man said. He looked puzzled: something was flashing behind his eyes like a warning. To himself? To Frank? “Whatever, dude.”

Frank watched as the man went away, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have anything to offer him, all memories of his existence erased. Or had they never been there before? At least his body seemed to know what it was that he did here, even if his brain didn’t, but touching the plastic sparked something in him. A cold, white wall beneath his white fingertips. Red fingertips. Red?

“Strange,” he said to the plastic he was holding.

It didn’t answer.

* * * *

_Work is good. Work is fulfilling. It’s good to work._

He repeated the words to himself as he boarded the train, trying to keep his mind level and in place. He had to get his hair cut like the note had instructed but he didn’t quite know where this “usual place” would be found among the twisted grey streets. He got off at a stop that sounded vaguely familiar, and picked a direction to walk in.

He couldn’t stop glancing down at his hands as he walked, but the swirling vortex of his fingerprints remained clean and smooth. He rubbed the tips of his index finger and thumbs together, feeling the edges of skin on skin. Just skin. Just skin. Just skin.

He stopped once at an intersection, and scraped his finger down the brick of the wall on an impulse. He could have _sworn_ , for a second, that the wall was a smooth white and that his finger was leaving a trail of vibrant, shining red. But when he blinked, the wall was grey and his fingers were normal again. Just skin. Just skin. Just skin.

He didn’t stop after that, not until he almost walked right past a black door sunk into the grey wall. There was no sign, no indication that this place was anything more than a door, but Frank squinted at it all the same.

Yes.

This was the place. He couldn’t remember seeing it, but he could vaguely remember standing where he was now, staring at the black wood. There was a nick in it, near the doorknob, and scratches around the lock. His hair was longer, curling over the collar of his white shirt. No. That had been before. Before?

Frank blinked away the ghosts of memory. This was definitely right.

He walked through the door, mostly confident about his decision until the door clicked shut behind him. The lights seemed dim at first, but Frank realized that was because the walls were painted a dark grey instead of white.

The room he’d walked into was small. Perhaps there was another room in which people got their hair cut, because this one contained only a large black desk at which a man with light brown hair was sitting. He adjusted the sit of the black glasses on his nose, and tugged at the collar of his white shirt without looking up at Frank. He was reading some kind of magazine that was as bright as the flash of some kind of material Frank could see hiding beneath his collar.

As Frank watched, the man shifted on the chair and turned the page of his magazine. Had he heard the door open and close? It wasn’t good to keep customers waiting. 

“Hello?” Frank asked.

“If you have an appointment,” the man said, voice a monotone, “someone will come out and help you.”

“Oh,” Frank said. “Okay. Where should I...sit?” There were no chairs in the room.

The man scowled and tilted his head up for the first time, brown eyes narrowed and brows drawn together. He opened his mouth, probably to tell Frank that standing was good for you, and the hair people wouldn’t be too long, because it wasn’t good to keep customers waiting.

His eyes widened instead. The edges of his mouth turned up into a smile.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, eyes somehow brighter than they had been before. Deeper. Like he’d been wearing a mask that was now tumbling to the floor.

Frank frowned at the sudden change.

“Hey, Rats! Peanut!” the man shouted, angling his head so his voice could carry into wherever the hair people were hiding, Frank supposed. “It’s Peanut! He ain’t in the ground!”

Frank stepped back when the man got out from behind his desk. He didn’t know what the man was shouting about, and his legs kept moving until he could feel the solid weight of the black door behind him.

“Peanut,” the man said, still beaming. “Holy shit, it’s been a while! We thought you were done and dust by now, caught a sweat-in and shivered off to the crows. Rock said you’d split, but I said no way you’d jump zones without shouting back.”

Frank blinked. The man was speaking gibberish, and he seemed to think he knew Frank. He was clearly delusional.

“I...” he said, trying to look at the man out of the corner of his eye to see it sparked anything, memory-wise. Nothing. He opened his mouth once, twice, feeling like he had the right words. They just didn’t want to come off his tongue. “It’s not good to swear,” he finally decided to say.

It wasn’t right, because the man’s face fell. “What?” he asked. His eyes were dull again, Frank noticed. Like he’d picked up his mask when Frank wasn’t watching. Like he was hiding something. “What did you just say?”

“Swearing,” Frank said, “and bright colours,” he gestured to the man’s torso, because now that he was closer, he could definitely see lines of bright blue (blue?) traced beneath the white, “Are disrespectful.” Did the man not know this? These rules were simple. Basic. Obvious. Not even rules. Manners. “Better Living Industries tells us that. Have you not been paying attention to the broadcasts? It’s not good to swear.”

“Oh,” the man said. He paused, squinting at Frank, brown eyes dark beneath his lashes. “Are you fucking with me?”

A door behind the desk that Frank hadn’t seen or noticed swung open and a tan face topped with black curls peeked out. “Did you say Peanut’s back?” White teeth flashed in a grin and he angled his head back into the room behind him, yelling: “Holy fuck, he is! Thrill, Peanut’s a ghost no more!”

“No,” the desk man said. His voice was flat again, a strange contrast to its previous vibrancy. “It isn’t him.”

Frank tilted his head to the side, watching as the curly-haired man blinked. “It isn’t?”

“Who’s Peanut?” Frank asked, glancing at the desk man for a moment. “I don’t know you. Do I? My note said to come here.”

The curly-haired man’s face hardened at the words, quicker than Frank would have imagined possible. His lip curled above his white teeth almost like a snarl. “Spin him to the nest, A.”

“Come on, Cobra, there’s no trail,” ‘A’ protested. “We’d already be through the grinder if Thrill thought he’d whiffed ink floating around the grid.”

“Skip it,” Cobra snapped. “My gut-meter’s clicking off the fuckin’ charts. Something ain’t right, and that thing can’t leave ‘til we see if it’s latex or not.”

Frank got the idea that they were talking about him. But he was a he. Not an it. “Human beings are not objects,” he said, objecting (ha) to A’s vise-like grip around his arm. The man was pulling him into a back room, which Frank would really have protested if he hadn’t come here to get his hair cut. This had to be where they did it.

A glanced at Frank over his shoulder. His gaze was almost sad. “Some are,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Frank admitted. He sat in the chair that A pointed to, and watched the man fold his arms across his chest. “Are you going to cut my hair now?”

“Slide the iron home, A,” Cobra snapped, moving around Frank and clicking a door shut.

A nodded and moved to the door he’d taken Frank through. A slick sound made Frank think lock.

Frank frowned. “It is not necessary to lock doors in Battery City,” he said. “Better Living Industries safeguards its citizens from theft.”

“He’s been popping again,” A muttered to Cobra.

“Not with Heads,” Cobra muttered back. “You’d see it in his eyes. All I see is glass. Maybe he got a shot from the whites.”

“A wipe?” A asked. “Fuck.”

“Why’re you spoutin’ shit ‘bout BLI, boy?” Cobra asked, raising his voice and glaring at Frank.

“Better Living Industries,” Frank clarified (it was polite to use full names), “are the reason we are living in an era of peace.” He shouldn’t even have to _say_ it. Didn’t they know?

“Definitely wiped,” Cobra said. “You take your pills?”

“Of course,” Frank said, confused. “Why would I not?” Except he could feel something inside him that didn’t want to take the pills.

But that was wrong. BLI said...

“Back to ground fuckin’ zero,” Cobra said. “Useless.”

“Hey,” Frank protested.

“Come on,” A said. “He’s not useless, he’s just. It’ll come back, Cobra. Look at him. He’s not _empty_. He’s still in there.”

“He’s not _right_ ,” Cobra snapped. “Shuck your blinders, A.”

It was getting warm in the small, dark room. Frank rolled up his sleeves. “Is someone going to cut my hair? You don’t seem to be very good at running your business.”

A glanced at him quickly, irritation welling behind his eyes momentarily. He froze mid-glare, mouth falling slack. “Shit,” he breathed. “ _Peanut_. Holy deities. What the _fuck_ have they done to you?”

Frank followed A’s line of sight down to his arms. Had this A character never seen arms before? “Who? What?” He checked the backs of his arms just in case there was something on them he'd missed. Still normal. Still skin.

“Okay,” Cobra said. He looked up from where he too had been staring at Frank’s arms to flicker his eyes nervously over Frank’s. He seemed to come to a decision. “Fuck, fine. We’ll keep him. But A...if he’s gone...”

“Of course,” A said, sighing. “I know.”

Cobra heaved a sigh and came to kneel in front of Frank. His eyes softened, but Frank could see that he was just hiding, somewhere inside his own head. “Hey, buddy,” he said softly. “When did you take your pills last, huh?”

“Lunch,” Frank said. But.

No. He hadn’t taken them during his break. He’d seen a fleeting shadow out of the corner of his eye, and had followed it around a corner, and then...break had been over.

“Breakfast?” he tried. Morning. After his shower? But.

Frank pursed his lips. He was missing something. “Yesterday at five,” he said, finally. “I should take them now.”

“No!” A shouted. “Sorry.” His voice at a normal level, he cleared his throat. “No. Don’t do that. I don’t think you should.”

“Better Living Industries say to,” Frank said. He didn’t think he should either. This thinking thing was becoming a real problem. He sniffed, and leaned back in the chair, eyes focused on A’s.

Cobra patted his knee. “Give me your pills, Peanut.”

“You keep calling me that,” Frank said. He dug in his pocket for the white bottle, and handed it to Cobra. It was good to trust people, right? “But my name’s F-”

“No!!” A shouted again.

“Sorry about him,” Cobra said. He stood up, Frank’s bottle of pills firmly in his hand. Frank couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Cobra’s entire, six-foot-something frame had been folded up on the ground in front of him just moments before. “We don’t like to use our legal identifiers here. So if it’s okay, we’re going to go ahead and call you Peanut. Shiny?”

Shiny meant good. How did he know that? Frank nodded.

Cobra smiled, but it was forced. “I’m gonna go talk to Thrill about this,” he said to A. “You keep him happy.”

“Won’t be hard,” A said. He shoved his glasses back up his nose. “Hey, is Glitter bouncing down when the sun sets? I heard a spot of chat on the breeze that said Hat Trick and his gang were shooting past, stopping to slam a few back, run a few around.”

Cobra’s face shifted, a new layer surfacing in his cheeks, tightening the edges of his eyes. “I’ll tell her,” he said. “Sit tight, Peanut.”

Peanut. Frank could feel a glimmer of something him, something past. His hair had been longer, face lighter. Neck...he couldn’t remember.

“Hey,” he said after nothing came to him. A was pacing in the small room, methodically undoing buttons on his white shirt and doing them back up. He stopped and glanced at Frank.

Frank swallowed past the lump in his throat. White plastic around a black hole had been in his eyes for a moment, obscuring his vision. Pressing against his forehead. He willed it away with a shake of his head. “Before. When I rolled up my sleeves, you looked...you said...” he stopped. “Is there something wrong with you? Or me? I mean, they’re just arms.”

“They’re just...” A blinked a few times, eyes wide behind the lenses of his glasses. The lenses made them look smaller than they were. He gnawed on his bottom lip, and opened his mouth, eyes careful. “They are just arms. You’re right.”

“So, what?” Frank asked. “What’s wrong with them? They don’t look good, or something?” His mouth felt weird. Strange. Like it was numb. Or alive.

“No, they. I don’t know how to...say it,” A said. He shifted his weight, and tucked his hair behind his ear. “Just... _look at them_.”

Frank did, but they looked like _arms_ is what they looked like. Muscles, bones, tendons, all wrapped together in a nice white package. “What?” Frank asked. “I don’t _get_ it.”

A stepped forward, reaching a hand out. “Can I?”

Frank shrugged. He watched as A took his wrist and pulled the arm towards him so his palm was resting on A’s thigh.

“You still don’t see it?” he asked, eyes on Frank’s.

Frank shook his head.

A bit his lower lip. “I don’t know if this’ll work. Watch.”

He took the index finger of his right hand, the one not gripping Frank’s left arm, and pressed it to Frank’s skin, the lightly tanned corner of his wrist, where blue blood raced below the surface and a bone edged out the side, mysteriously connecting his hand and arm together. As Frank watched, A traced a line from his wrist up to his elbow, curving down the side of his arm, down its back, down.

Beneath his finger, in the space that should have just been skin, should have been light hair, skin, A left behind ridges of white, raised edges like mountain lines on a map, uneven and _shiny_.

Frank gasped, or tried to, but his breath got caught in his throat somewhere between an inhale and a scream. In the space left by A’s fingers, the scars that hadn’t been there, _hadn’t been there before_ , were there now, was a bright pain flaring behind his eyes, a starburst of light. A’s finger kept moving back, up his arm, towards his shoulder. Frank tried to pull away. His body twisted, back slamming against the too-solid chair behind him, but A had trapped Frank’s legs together between his own, and he couldn’t move any farther than that.

A’s finger was moving slowly now, and it wasn’t a finger any more but a knife, bright and sharp. His legs were trapped on a bed, secured with straps; his other arm was pinned to his side. A band of leather was holding his head down to the bed. Something was stuffed in his mouth: a stale cloth that he could barely breathe around. The pressure was choking him, scratching the back of his throat and pressing down on his tongue.

He tried to scream, but couldn’t say a word, just shuddered in a breath through his nose as the knife kept moving. It slipped to the side when he tugged at his arm.

Voices murmured, dead eyes hiding behind white masks. Sterile.

“That’s good, very good. Secure the patient, please?”

Strong hands wrapped around Frank’s arms, pressed his hand down to the bed so he couldn’t move as the metal tore through his skin.

His back arched off the bed when whoever was holding the knife brushed his elbow. The room went dark for a moment, even though the clinical lights were so bright Frank could barely remember his name. They wiped everything out, made everything so clean he wanted to vomit.

A wave of nausea did wash over him then, smashing him over the head like he was a cymbal. More hands were on his chest now, pushing against his heart, keeping him from moving anything.

“What do we do in this kind of situation, Turner?”

“Secure the patient, Doctor Beckett.”

“Very good.”

“Uh, sir?” A different voice. Softer. Higher. Still as hollow as the others. “Why can’t we just sedate him? He wouldn’t move then.”

“How many times...” Dimly, Frank heard a sigh, muffled by cotton. A mask. There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears. After a moment, he recognized it as his own voice, keening against the pain in his arm. “It, Macy. Always it. Why do we assign them with non-gender-specific pronouns, Macy?”

“Because...” A pause, like the girl was thinking. “They’re not people, sir. They’re agents of the Better Living Industries.”

“And?”

“And they have no identities.”

“Very good.”

“Doctor Beckett?” The first voice again.

“Yes, Turner.”

“It’s bleeding all over. Won’t it die of blood loss?”

“Oh, well. In that case, you had better set that elbow. This one is just a mannequin, really. Doesn’t matter if it dies. I imagine Korse will be disappointed that one of his toys has perished, but he’ll find more. Cross, King, you’re doing a very good job of securing the patient.”

“Thank you, sir.” A chorus. Two voices in unison.

Frank felt like he was floating now, brain buzzing. His heart was slowing down, probably because of how much he was bleeding.

“And why do we cut so high, Macy?”

“Because the elbow is a joint, Doctor Beckett. And it’s harder to set than most other bones if we want to do it right.”

“You learn very quickly. Yes. That is why we do it. Next time I expect your incision to be much shorter, Turner. And straighter. Look, you’ve gone almost all the way to its wrist.” A sigh again, followed by a sudden stab of heat that traveled up Frank’s shoulder, across his chest. His back arched again, but he didn’t move very far.

Everything was fading. Doctor Beckett ordered Macy to thread a needle.

“In an emergency situation,” his voice buzzed in Frank’s ears like a bee as he fell, back-first, into a black pit of tar that slowly sucked him in. “We wouldn’t have oxygen masks, but I think we’d better put one on this thing now.”

“Yes sir,” a dim choir of devilish angels chorused.

Something slammed. Frank’s heart, or a door. Maybe a foot on the floor. Something touched Frank’s face, cool plastic holding cooler air. He managed to claw his way almost to the surface of his consciousness, enough so he could just watch through the windows of his eyes.

A venomous voice spat white noise that Frank could barely see or hear. “You fucking _useless_ excuse for a doctor! I can’t goddamn believe you’d let my experiment bleed out all over the floor! Patch him the fuck back up! I need him!”

“Excuse me, Korse. This is a sterile environment. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Like _hell_ I’m going to leave. Put him back together right now!”

“I think you’ll find,” Doctor Beckett said snidely, “that your _Scarecrows_ were a little bit too rough with their plaything. Maybe next time if you want to avoid this kind of situation, you’ll keep them on a tighter leash.” He sniffed. “And it isn’t a _him_ , it’s an _it_.”

“Well, I need it,” Korse growled.

Beckett sighed. “Very well. Macy?”

One of the interns snapped something along Frank’s arm back in place, and with that flash, like a kick to the head, Frank was out.

**Chapter 3**

_“What the fuck, A, what the fuck did you do to him?”_

_“He couldn’t_ see _them, Cobra, shit. He kept looking at his arms and he couldn’t see any of it: the scars and the, fuck. And I just touched him, that’s fuckin’ all, just kinda traced one and he started seizing up and screaming, and he wouldn’t stop, and, and, and...”_

_“Fuck, okay, it’s okay, calm down.”_

_“H-h-he just fell, Cobra, to the ground, I couldn’t, I didn’t. He was just, j-just holding his elbow and then he fell, and h-and.”_

Something creaked. Clicked. Stepped.

_“A, hey.”_

_“T-thrill, I. I’m s-so sorry, I.”_

_“A, look at me. It’s okay. He’ll be okay. And if he isn’t, it won’t be your fault, okay?”_

_“But I j-just --”_

_“Okay?”_

_“Y...y...oh-okay.”_

_“Fuck. I can’t believe they just dumped him like that. What the hell did they do to him?”_

_“It isn’t just his arms, either, Thrill. I took a peek under his shirt, and it’s...they’re all over. The scars.”_

_“Think he got into a fight with a Crow?”_

_“A Crow with knife hands, maybe.”_

_“A hundred fucking Crows.”_

_“Reminds me of what Kid was telling us about, his medical training. What, dissection? That shit he did with that rat to show us what a goddamn liver looked like, remember? Fucking sick.”_

_“Maybe it’s both. You seen him lately?”_

_“Kid? Nah. Him and Party are probably trying to figure out how to function with a kid underfoot. That little punk’s cute though. I bet she can shoot like a motherfucker. Dad looked off though.”_

_“They killed his wife, what did you expect? Shit, it looks like they fucking killed Peanut too.”_

_“Sick fucking bastards.”_

_“Shit, you guys, I think he’s waking up.”_

Frank’s eyes snapped open. He had no air in his lungs. The taste of dry cloth clawed at his tongue and clogged up his throat. His chest heaved, and he scrambled to get away. From white legs. Black shoes. Off the floor.

His hand slipped, and for a moment he fell back, seeing blood on every available surface. Drip-drip-dripping. It was getting on his knees, soaking through his pants, but then he blinked and it was just sweat. Just sweat. It wasn’t just on his hands or knees (hands and _knees_ , all fours, feet kicking his lungs up to his chin), but trickling down his arms, his sides, his chest, his face.

It burned when it reached his eyes, but he ignored the pain in favour of getting away from A and Cobra and whoever the fuck ran this sick place.

“Peanut,” Cobra said.

Frank looked up, from the man’s shoes to his knees and then to his face.

He felt like he wasn’t breathing at all, but his chest was straining at its limits, trying to force as much air in and out of his lungs as it could. His heart was pounding faster than it should. He was practically swimming inside his clothes. They were sticking to him like he’d stepped into the shower fully clothed. The white of his shirt was now mostly clear.

“Hey buddy,” Cobra said, frowning. He moved, stretching a hand towards Frank.

Frank curled into himself, pushing away as best as he could, practically crab-walking. His left arm didn’t seem to want to work properly, and his legs felt the straps of the table digging in. Korse beamed at his reaction when Frank blinked, and laughed so hard Frank had to close his eyes. “Get the fuck away from me,” he croaked, opening his eyes wide to see Cobra, not Korse. He was afraid to blink, but couldn’t help it. His body took over, forcing his eyelids down and up, focusing and unfocusing, picking up smells and sounds.

He felt like a trapped animal. The walls were closing in, dark and dark and it was like being unconscious even though he was awake. He scrambled to his feet, slipping a few times on the slick surfaces beneath his hand.

Out. He needed to get out.

His fingers scrabbled uselessly at the wall, trying to peel away its layers like they had done to him. He wouldn’t stitch it back together though, wouldn’t put it back wrong, wouldn’t leave scars all along his arms. Scars that he _hadn’t seen_.

“That isn’t a door,” a new voice said. New, but old. Grating on the nerves in Frank’s mind. _Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Funny little rhymes they used to spout off, Frank. You wouldn’t recall, would you. Just a young boy when the bombs fell. When the world burned. I love an impressionable child, they’re so much easier to break and put back together without any seams._

Frank gasped for air and whirled around, feeling a hand pressing between his shoulder blades. He backed up against the wall, seeking out protection that wasn’t a corner, _you can get trapped in a corner, Frankie, see?_ He swallowed down a ghostly memory of a white arm pressing his throat into the wall with a shudder and inched up onto his toes, trying to make himself taller.

His shirt was choking him around the neck. Tightening around his windpipe, his aorta, the jutting protrusions of spine that crawled whenever the fabric shifted. He tore the flimsy buttons, feeling them give way beneath his clumsy fingers. He struggled to breathe as he shucked his shirt, feeling the uneven glide of it over scars he hadn’t _seen_ before. His eyes flickered from Cobra to A to the third man in the room, brown hair black hair brown hair.

The third man couldn’t have been taller than Frank, not by much. His hair was black like the floor, black like Cobra’s but different. Shinier. It fell into his eyes at odd angles that were too unnatural to be anything but forced. Behind him, A. Shoulders hunched together a bit too much, causing minuscule creases along the front. Cobra’s, inches away, feet shifting on the floor. Restless. Ready to strike. Frank didn’t have any weapons if he needed to defend himself, but when had they ever given him a weapon?

He was the only fucking weapon he had.

Frank spread his legs, steadying his stance and flattening his palms against the wall behind him. It was solid. He could use it to launch himself forward, and had before, on and around white, inching away from dead masks and deader minds, robots trained to kill, to incapacitate, to break. It had worked then and it would work now, with these humans who could so easily be surprised.

Too easy. If pain wasn’t radiating from every square inch of his skin, he could take them down without blinking. That’s why everything had been simple: he was strong. In body if not in mind. He felt like he’d run a mile or spent an hour in the white room. Maybe he couldn’t take them down, but he could give them something to think about.

Frank blinked. “Who are you?” he asked, panting. He didn’t want to kill these people, or hurt them, he realized. They felt right, like a missing piece of a puzzle he hadn’t known existed.

Another shudder of pain wracked his body when his left elbow touched the wall behind him, a flash of white-hot that made him clutch his limp arm to his chest. He wished he could tear off his skin like he’d just torn off his shirt. The air was too cold and his body was too hot. Down to the bone, jittering in the hand holding his elbow, he felt a thrumming: a whine. Like something inside him was trying to get out and keep him the same.

“Who. The. Fuck. _Are_ all of you?” He could hear every beat of his heart hammering in his ears. He could hear A’s ragged breathing. He could feel the sweat dripping down below his pants, tracing his legs from thigh to ankle. It was on his chest, too, the dew of sweat glistening on the criss cross of skin that ached with every breath. The lines didn’t follow any discernible pattern, but Frank could still feel the hands that had made them as they held him back, glinting canines peeking out between paper lips. He could feel the weight of A’s gaze on him, Cobra’s and the third man’s as well, all pointing in his direction like the brightest lights.

 

Frank flinched when the shortest man stepped forward, body moving to protect itself. The one Frank didn’t know. Did know. Couldn’t remember. Thrill. Frank glanced over Thrill’s shoulder, caught a glimpse of A’s face covered in tears, and Cobra’s eyebrows pushed together. Frank inched away, realizing his forearms were above his face. Ready to block the lightning fast strike of white.

The man moved his hand slowly like he was facing a frightened animal, but all Frank could see was a monster approaching: black-gloved and white-sleeved. Using proper protocol to herd him in, put him to sleep, wake him up. Up. Up to find a lesson on punching and kicking, ducking and rolling. _Normals have faster reflexes, Korse. They aren’t hindered by the pills, which we’ve found often suppress the senses. Dull the mind._

_So make the pills better. Remove any sensory inhibitions you find in normals. No thinking necessary, just action. Up, Frank. Up on your fucking feet. Let’s see how well you do against my robots. They’re still prototypes, but they run on pure instinct and don’t have any of that pesky empathy I’ve seen you display._

Frank blinked sweat and blood away from his eyes.

No. Not blood.

Not anymore.

The man cleared his throat. His eyes were patient and deep. Trusting. Trusting Frank. When he spoke, he moved his mouth carefully. He sidestepped all of Frank’s inner alarms with the ease of a person who gained peoples’ confidence by offering himself to them. Not through intimidation. “I’m Thriller,” he said.

Frank choked when the word bored through his skull, carving a path between his brain cells and his eyes. He didn’t realize that he had lurched forward, head in his hands, until someone’s hand was on his shoulder and he was facing the ground again, on his knees. Tears mingled with sweat, coursing down his cheeks and along the sides of his nose. His chest heaved again and again with sobs that echoed down to his toes. His forehead met with the floor, pressing down against the memories that threatened to overtake him.

“I’m Frank,” he chanted to himself, forcing the words out past the clenched barrier of his teeth as he tried to hold on. “I’m Frank, I’m Frank, I’m _Frank_.”

Thriller.

Thriller, dark eyes sparking, leaning against a door.

Thriller, hands on a wheel, ink curling over his fingers. Lips stretched thin over his sharp, white teeth as he laughed with his entire body.

Thriller, helping Frank pull the emergency break when he forgot to.

Thriller, pouring a drink.

Thriller.

Thriller.

Thriller.

“F-fuck,” he choked. Memory told him to move his hands from the dirty floor to twist in Thriller’s shirt. His mind reminded him of the way Thriller would have moved, protecting Frank with his own fragile body.

“It’s okay,” Thriller whispered. His voice was soft and his hands softer, moving circles on the craggy surface of Frank’s back, over mountains and valleys left by cruel masters. He pulled him close as Frank heaved sob after sob after snotty sob into Thriller’s shirt.

He didn’t seem to mind that Frank was dirtying it all to hell or that Frank wasn’t wearing a shirt: he just let him cry until the sobs he was riding were nothing more than remembered motions.

Frank collapsed into Thriller’s solid shoulder, spent and quaking with the aftershocks. His face, tear-stained and probably disgusting, was smushed into Thriller’s warm, life-beating neck as breath hiccuped in Frank’s own throat.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe, huh?” Thriller murmured into Frank’s ear. His words tumbled from his mouth like honey, and his hands moved up to card through Frank’s soaking hair. The motion was soothingly familiar. “You’re gonna get the shivers soon from not taking your pills.”

Frank made a vague noise of protest when the warmth of Thriller’s body disappeared from under him, but he was hoisted up by strong arms a moment later. Cobra’s arms.

“You’re a slippery little bean,” Cobra rumbled beneath Frank. He could feel the words through Cobra’s chest. “Gonna wrap you up in blankets, okay, little buddy?”

Cobra’s eyes twinkled above a glass he’d just cleaned. He dodged a punch from a woman - Glitter. He touched her hand when he thought nobody was looking, watched her move across the room, twinkled his eyes at her when she smiled. He smiled too: at Frank, at the music, at A. Thriller patted Frank on the back and Cobra met his hand in the air. High-five.

“Little buddy,” Frank mumbled. That was what Cobra called him. “Not that short.”

He shivered and cracked open an eye, dimly surprised to see that they were in the tunnels already. The shop led down there, a sloping staircase that rotted away into mossy stone. A was keeping pace with Cobra, long legs matching long legs. Plaid shirts, easy grins, helping hands.

“‘member you too,” Frank mumbled again. His eye drifted shut, clenching closed when a wave of nausea and pain crashed over him, carried him to another, higher apex. He groaned, skin suddenly sparking with electricity, supersensitive from withdrawal. Cobra’s shirt was scratching his sides, his hands left bruises all along Frank’s ribs. He curled in on himself when the nausea came again, hitting him over the head with a mallet, wringing his empty stomach with knives instead of hands.

“Hurry,” he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw. “Gonna need a bucket.”

“Shit,” A said. “We’re almost there, Nut. Just hold on.”

“No hurling on the Cobra,” Cobra muttered. “Keep your acid down.”

Frank heard something click in his jaw when he moaned again. He almost tumbled out of Cobra’s arms before someone moved him, tugging on his arms and shoulders and moving him over a bucket where he emptied his stomach.

Legs and arms shaking from the effort, he fell to the side, managing to steer clear of the bucket. A cool hand covered his forehead, and for a split second he felt relief, riding on the post-vomit high before he came crashing back down.

“Withdrawal’s a bitch,” someone commented above him. Frank recognized the tones. Rip. Some kind of fancy Latin-inspired name. A strange accent familiar on his tongue, fitting between his teeth like a lanky body fit behind a bar, figure distorted through the multitudes of glasses.

“Can’t imagine going through it twice,” someone else said. A steady beat and a steadier hand. Rock. Splinters from drumsticks buried deep in his palms, a foot tapping on the floor. Frank’s ears rang with the strength of the memories.

Tunnel Rats. Cobra’s gang. Thriller’s.

Not Frank’s. Not really.

“Back the fuck off or I’ll shoot y’all,” the woman growled. Glitter. Sparkling eyes as hard as rock, mouth glancing off Cobra’s brown cheek, fingers twitching for the barrel of her gun. Frank groaned as his brain threw itself at the barrier of his skull, pounding a rhythm behind his eyes. “You’re burning up, sweetie. You just go to sleep, okay? Sleep it all off.”

He was lifted off the ground, floating in midair between Cobra and A, who leaned down to whisper in Frank’s ear as they moved him. Hopefully somewhere safe. Away from Korse. Away. “Glad you’re back,” A whispered.

Frank tried to nod, but found that his neck didn’t want to support his head anymore. His brain wanted to thank Cobra when he tucked blankets around Frank, but his body decided to sever its connection to reality when his face hit a pillow.

Tomorrow, he would wake up. Next week, he would wake up.

Only this time, it wouldn’t be to white walls and a whiter mind.

And this time, he wouldn’t be alone.


End file.
